Answering a question he says many people were too shy to ask, Ward 7 Coun. Mike Jakubo says the bandage and scar on his cheek is the result of surgery to remove malignant melanoma.
In a post on his Facebook page Monday, Jakubo said he's tried to keep a low profile over the last six weeks as he has dealt with the issue.
“So few have seen me with a large bandage on my face, more have seen the 26 stitches with bandages off in this pic, and others simply haven’t seen me at all,” he wrote in the post.
“It has been a period of time where emotions have swayed from the good to the bad and all places in between and a time during which I have received the most amazing support from the most amazing wife anyone could ask for, Jody.”
Jakubo said before he noticed a patch of skin on his face just before Christmas that had changed in appearance.
“It was not a defined mole or birth mark and it was a range of brown colour from dark to light,” he said. “It had jagged edges and had changed shape and size from pictures taken over a year ago.”
A biopsy lead to a diagnosis of malignant melanoma in January, and a week later the patch of bad skin and the surrounding five cm of good skin was removed.
“I did not want to post anything, but now that I have found out that my plastic surgeon successfully removed all the melanoma and that I do not have any other suspicious spots on my body I really feel that it is important to let everyone know, both that I am OK, but also that this can happen to anyone,” Jakubo wrote.
“In most cases it may be nothing, but in this case it was bad. It needed to be removed quickly before it spread further or went deeper in my skin and our health system made that happen fast.
“All this to say thank you. Thank you to Jody and the kids, and to all my family and friends for all the support. And to say that you can never be too cautious, because if I or Jody were not, this story could have been totally different even just a year from now.”
